On nights like this, I do not want to live a long life. People say that if you live long enough, things will get better. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. But what if the tunnel never ends? Isn’t a long life also a perfect avenue for bad things to compound and shatter your dreams? I have watched as my hopes and dreams slowly turn to ash. This is the 25th year of my life, and everything I have ever hoped and dreamed for, none has come through — or looks like it ever will. I am not in the place I thought I would be when I dusted my heels at the gate of my secondary school and said hello to a world seemingly brimming with opportunities. Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. I cannot bear the thought of the next 25 years.
Is it weird that I am fixated on death — mine? That I have imagined the various how’s and when’s? That on some nights I find myself chasing each scenario down till I have breathed my last? Tonight, the keke is speeding against the run of traffic, trying to join the flow of vehicles going its intended way — it’s hard to explain. There’s a vehicle rushing towards us from behind. I am seated beside the driver wondering if he sees the car speeding up from behind him. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. I am seated beside the driver wondering if life would cease instantaneously if I let go of the frame of the keke and fall into the road, my body thrown against the speeding vehicle. I have imagined the world without me, this comes easy to me — imagining spaces where I do not exist, where I am not needed or wanted. The world will move on, perchance even experience a boon. I hold the frame tighter. I am still a coward.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. When Mrs. Smith, the best English teacher I have ever had — now of blessed memory, quoted Julius Caesar during a class, I froze. I wanted so badly to argue that that made no sense, to refute the quote by screaming that at least the coward was alive and the valiant was rotting beneath the ground. I never spoke; no one likes the classmate that is seemingly asking questions for attention and lord knows just how much I wanted to be liked back then. I realise now that the urge I had to stand up and dismiss the quote was because of how true it hit home. I was 13, if not 14, and I had already experienced that death at least once. Since then, I have died more times than I can count. And each time, I have wondered if this would be last time. Alas, almost 11/12 years later and I am still witnessing my death. How many more deaths I still have in me, I wonder.
There’s a reason I struggle with journaling, with recording my thoughts on a piece of paper that is accessible to me without any effort. On January 3, 2018, I term this reason: “not being hurt enough”, which makes some sense and then doesn’t. The entries are inconsistent. I am struggling with myself to be consistent, to face my fear and stop avoiding the blank page. On the 17th of that month, I write: I am trying hard not to drown, but the noise above is suffocating me. I call myself a coward that day too. The 18th is just four lines. Six short sentences and two questions. It is no surprise that the last time I write in it is five days later. The preceding days are me pining over friends whose silence are hurting me more than I let on. I drop my pen and do not write. I do not think the reason “not being hurt enough” is encompassing enough. It does not help that I came back to journal on the 9th of the next month, and left it till August of the next year. It feels like each time I come face to face with my thoughts, with the blank page, I die again. Maybe I don’t like the idea of leaving behind a ‘crime scene’, of leaving behind evidence of the fact that the centre cannot hold. If a tree falls in the forest and does not make a sound, did it really fall? I would hate to be a bother. I do not want to make a sound.
The thing with a coward’s death is how it happens when you are not even expecting it. In a cab, at work — while trying to extract a retained root, or in a car driven by a friend; a part of you dies and your head drops. The moment has passed and now you’re left feeling raw and exposed, ashamed of your inability to act. It is difficult to say whether my respect for rules is because of the order it provides or the fear of constituted authority; it could be both, either or neither. I find myself cringing whenever I am in a cab and the driver beats the red light, or my friend makes a wrong turn. In those moments, fear seizes me for two reasons: the chaos we are potentially causing, and the fact that there’s never really a justifiable reason for breaking those rules. My lips do not move however; I turn my head away from the road in front of me, and shake my head. Fear wins again; a recurring theme of my life.
One particular evening, I was not the one in front of the cab. I was sat to the right, behind the driver. The man in front of me was an elderly man, a quail egg farmer, who had greeted everyone individually on getting into the cab. The driver beats a red light. I cringe and look away. The elderly man does not. He turns to the driver and asks why he beat the red light, if it was right to do that. The driver looks at the man like a chastised child, and then shrugs it off. The elderly man says nothing and turns his head to window. From my seat at the back, I am staring in awe at this man. For such a small thing, it seems melodramatic to say that I was in awe. But when you are perpetually living in fear, and running away from life, even the smallest acts of defiance against things that are wrong, but weirdly normal — beating traffic lights when there are no oncoming cars, seem like the greatest acts of courage. The elderly man gets down a few stops later. Our journey continues. There is a red light in front of us, and the driver is speeding towards it. I turn away from the road, prepared to cringe. It doesn’t come. The driver slams his brakes, jolting me forward and turning my head to face the road. He stops before the red light and looks at the empty seat to his right. He waits. The light turns green.
“If we don’t speak up, we are cowards and accomplices.”
— Judith Hertog
It’s been a little over a week — the 20th of October 2020 should never be forgotten — since the Nigerian government slaughtered its own citizens for daring to demand for their right to live without being killed by those tasked with the job of protecting them. In the build up to that very horrifying event, I watched anger well up in me: anger at the injustices happening to people just trying to live, anger at myself for being insufficient, and anger at myself for being afraid. I was angry, seething with rage and snapping at my boss at work who thought the protests were unfounded, but I was still scared. I was angry, seething with rage and angrily responding government accounts on twitter, angrily retweeting the hashtag #EndSARS, but I was still scared. And as long as fear was winning, the more insufficient I felt — useless, helpless. I would eventually, after a heated argument at work, find myself on the streets but it was not enough. My anger’s victory was short-lived. In a cab back home that evening, I got a text saying that people were being carted by their cab drivers to police stations. So when the driver started speaking about the issue, I kept quiet and turned away. I died again.
There’s a video of a man singing the national anthem in the dark while gunshots blaze around him. I have no idea who that man is but when his voice begins to break, when his centre begins to fold, I am reminded of my cowardice. There are no words for the shame that enveloped me, as I watched the video with my tears obscuring my vision. I saw police men gun down unarmed civilians on the road and give themselves high fives, I saw people begging each other to stay alive. I saw all this from my bed, because I was afraid. Judith Hertog in her essay “Cowards and Accomplices” writes: Only in fairy tales and action movies do heroes defeat evil and get cheered on by the masses. In real life, they usually end up with a bullet in the head and maybe a brief mention in the news. The Nigerian government has gone on a ridiculous drive to deny everything I saw, everything we saw. With bullets in their heads, and their lives gone, I am afraid that a coward like me is who is left behind to remember them. All I can keep thinking is: how long till it is me? And will that death be my last or will I die again?
But this isn’t an essay about fear, because I have spent all my life in fear. This is about how I freeze in the face of my fear. This is about my cowardice, and addressing this huge and shy elephant in the middle of the room. Because brave people act in spite of their fear. It is not because they are unafraid, it is because they have decided that there is much to be gained from acting despite the trembling knees, sweaty palms, and the shaky voices. How long will I continue to fear my own shadow, to silence myself, to cringe and turn away? When does my cowardice end?
I do not want to live a long life. Albert Camus writes: …killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. I confess. Life is too much for me on most days, and on other days I simply cannot understand it. I do not know what it is about living, and the repetitive things done out of habit, that makes me want to cling on to life despite how much it overwhelms me. There’s a bravery to taking your own life that Mr. Camus does not mention in his essay Absurdity and Suicide; but I am aware of it. And I am devoid of it. I do not want to live a long life. But I am a coward.
Thank you for reading! Please share, and if you have any comments, questions or anything feel free reach out to me. Have a lovely day!
Osondu @theosondu
